Feel free to send me an IM at CasserahDR. If I can't make what you're looking for, I can probably recommend some people for you.

For a non-Paladin, I'd suggest a mostly chain, swap greaves of all the other armors setup. For PVP, play to strengths (stealthies might find more milage in light armor). The greave swapping method will allow you to train all four without completely punishing yourself hinderance wise, and maintain solid protection on the bulk of your body. Another bonus, leg damage rarely stuns, so the lower ranked/less protective armors there aren't game breaking.

As for finding crafters, there's a BUNCH of great smiths out there. As he just did me a solid, I'll take a moment and plug Elfverhan's work, especially in rare metal plate. If you get truly desperate you can drop me a line (my AIM is in my IG Profile) and I can do most things in metal, but as I'm lazy I charge more. If you frequent the areas around Shard, check Secretia's shop too.

Good luck, welcome back, and happy armor swapping.

Samsaren

From what I've been hearing from Warrior Mages, you'll get hurt more in plate than in chain in the new system. You may want to at least consider training chain up.

I suppose in that case for the moment I will see how things go with the gear that I do have, and decide what to do from there. I wouldn't want someone to go to the trouble of making me something only to need to switch to chain.

I should prooooobably delete my previous post in shame, because I just realized that I was wearing my shield on my shoulder, which as it turns out is a pretty poor way to try to block attacks.

I also noticed that the mixing penalty for plate and brigandine is large. Like, very large. If I wear my plate helm I am insignificantly hindered; add plate armor that apps as 'somewhat hindered' and I end up at 'somewhat hindered'.

Add brigandine gauntlets, which app as 'barely hindered' INSTEAD of the body-covering plate, and I end up at 'somewhat hindered' anyway.

But I am excited about the possibility of not having to ditch plate :D

>Perhaps it's the low ranks (120), perhaps it's that it's old (though still player-made) armor, but either way I'm currently almost better off unarmored. The hits don't hurt much, but every single one is light or better where before they would have been mostly glancing.

That may be, at least in part, due to general 3.0 combat changes. Things I could hunt previously without issue on other characters can really beat on them now.

You should give shield of light a try. It buffs shield skill and eventually allows you to arm-wear a medium shield.

On the bright side, clerics are still very strong defensively, but their strength lies in spells. with MPP and MAF, that chain will protect better than plate. Plus, your warding and debilitation arsenal is terrific.

>>> the entire problem was that I was unintentionally attempting to use strictly evasion and no other defenses. Adjust my shield fixed it.

Although I have more experience as a Moon Mage since my Cleric is fairly low level (30ish), I have found that a shield/parry defence is viable if no ranged attackers are involved. I can train evasion by adding a small amount of evasion into my defensive stance. I do use chain solely, however.